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Greenhouse Gases from Agriculture

Chapter · January 2021

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-55396-8_1

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Chapter 1
Greenhouse Gases from Agriculture

M. Zaman, K. Kleineidam, L. Bakken, J. Berendt, C. Bracken,

K. Butterbach-Bahl, Z. Cai, S. X. Chang, T. Clough, K. Dawar, W. X. Ding,
P. Dörsch, M. dos Reis Martins, C. Eckhardt, S. Fiedler, T. Frosch, J. Goopy,
C.-M. Görres, A. Gupta, S. Henjes, M. E. G. Hofmann, M. A. Horn,
M. M. R. Jahangir, A. Jansen-Willems, K. Lenhart, L. Heng,
D. Lewicka-Szczebak, G. Lucic, L. Merbold, J. Mohn, L. Molstad, G. Moser,
P. Murphy, A. Sanz-Cobena, M. Šimek, S. Urquiaga, R. Well,
N. Wrage-Mönnig, S. Zaman, J. Zhang, and C. Müller

Abstract The rapidly changing global climate due to increased emission of anthro-
pogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) is leading to an increased occurrence of extreme
weather events such as droughts, floods, and heatwaves. The three major GHGs are
carbon dioxide (CO2 ), methane (CH4 ), and nitrous oxide (N2 O). The major natural
sources of CO2 include ocean–atmosphere exchange, respiration of animals, soils

M. Zaman (B) · L. Heng

Soil and Water Management & Crop Nutrition (SWMCN) Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division
of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
Vienna, Austria
e-mail: m.zaman@iaea.org; zamanm_99@yahoo.com
K. Kleineidam · C. Eckhardt · A. Jansen-Willems · G. Moser · C. Müller
Institute of Plant Ecology, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany
L. Bakken
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Aas, Norway
J. Berendt · S. Fiedler · N. Wrage-Mönnig
University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany
C. Bracken
School of Agriculture and Food Science and Earth Institute, University College Dublin, Dublin,
Ireland
K. Butterbach-Bahl
Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Atmospheric Environmental Research
(IMK-IFU), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Z. Cai
School of Geography Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Jiangsu, China
S. X. Chang
Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada
T. Clough
Department of Soil & Physical Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture & Life Sciences,
Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand
© The Author(s) 2021 1
M. Zaman et al. (eds.), Measuring Emission of Agricultural Greenhouse Gases
and Developing Mitigation Options using Nuclear and Related Techniques,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55396-8_1
2 M. Zaman et al.

(microbial respiration) and plants, and volcanic eruption; while the anthropogenic
sources include burning of fossil fuel (coal, natural gas, and oil), deforestation, and
the cultivation of land that increases the decomposition of soil organic matter and
crop and animal residues. Natural sources of CH4 emission include wetlands, termite
activities, and oceans. Paddy fields used for rice production, livestock production
systems (enteric emission from ruminants), landfills, and the production and use of
fossil fuels are the main anthropogenic sources of CH4 . Nitrous oxide, in addition
to being a major GHG, is also an ozone-depleting gas. N2 O is emitted by natural
processes from oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. Anthropogenic N2 O emissions
occur mostly through agricultural and other land-use activities and are associated
with the intensification of agricultural and other human activities such as increased
use of synthetic fertiliser (119.4 million tonnes of N worldwide in 2019), inefficient
use of irrigation water, deposition of animal excreta (urine and dung) from grazing
animals, excessive and inefficient application of farm effluents and animal manure
to croplands and pastures, and management practices that enhance soil organic N
mineralisation and C decomposition. Agriculture could act as a source and a sink
of GHGs. Besides direct sources, GHGs also come from various indirect sources,
including upstream and downstream emissions in agricultural systems and ammonia
(NH3 ) deposition from fertiliser and animal manure.

K. Dawar
Department of Soil and environmental Sciences, University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan
W. X. Ding
Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
P. Dörsch · L. Molstad
Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management,
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Aas, Norway
T. Frosch
Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, Technical University
Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
J. Goopy
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya
C.-M. Görres
Department of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition/Department of Applied Ecology, Hochschule
Geisenheim University, Geisenheim, Germany
A. Gupta
Independent Consultant India, Mumbai, India
S. Henjes · M. A. Horn
Institute of Microbiology, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany
M. E. G. Hofmann
Picarro B.V., ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
M. M. R. Jahangir
Department of Soil Science, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh
1 Greenhouse Gases from Agriculture 3

Keywords Climate change · GHG · N2 O · CO2 · NH3 · Animals

1.1 Introduction

The global climate is changing rapidly. This leads to the increasing occurrence of
extreme weather events such as droughts and floods. The major cause of these events
is the rising temperature in the Earth’s atmosphere, which is driven by increasing
emissions of climate-relevant greenhouse gases (GHGs) that trap heat in the atmo-
sphere. Major GHGs include carbon dioxide (CO2 ), methane (CH4 ), and nitrous
oxide (N2 O) (Fig. 1.1).
Carbon dioxide is the major GHG responsible for the increasing greenhouse effect
of the atmosphere. Key natural sources of CO2 include ocean–atmosphere exchange,
respiration of animals, soils (microbial respiration) and plants, and volcanic eruption.
Major anthropogenic sources of CO2 include burning of fossil fuel (coal, natural gas,
and oil), deforestation, and the cultivation of land that increases the decomposition
of soil organic matter and crop and animal residues (Xu and Shang 2016).
Aside from CO2 , CH4 is a major GHG, which is emitted by natural and anthro-
pogenic processes. Natural sources of CH4 emission include wetlands, termite activ-
ities, and occan. Paddy fields used for rice production, livestock production systems

J. Zhang
School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
K. Lenhart
Bingen University of Applied Sciences, Berlinstr. 109, Bingen 55411, Germany

D. Lewicka-Szczebak
Laboratory of Isotope Geology and Geoecology, Institute of Geological Sciences, University of
Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
G. Lucic
Picarro Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA
L. Merbold
Mazingira Centre, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya
J. Mohn
Laboratory for Air Pollution & Environmental Technology, Empa Dübendorf, Dübendorf,
Switzerland
P. Murphy
Environment & Sustainable Resource Management Section, School of Agriculture & Food
Science, and UCD Earth Institute, University College, Dublin, Ireland
A. Sanz-Cobena
Research Center for the Management of Environmental and Agricultural Risks (CEIGRAM),
ETSIAAB, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
M. Šimek
Institute of Soil Biology, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and Faculty of
Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
4 M. Zaman et al.

Fig. 1.1 Major greenhouse

gas emissions and
contributions by various
sectors (IPCC 2014a, b)

(enteric emission from ruminants), landfills, and production and use of fossil fuels
are the main anthropogenic sources of CH4 . Furthermore, CH4 can be produced by
anaerobic mineralization by methanogenic archaea in both natural and man-made
systems. Also, plants have been shown to emit CH4 .
The third major GHG is N2 O (Zaman et al. 2012). Besides being a major GHG,
N2 O is a major ozone-depleting gas (Ravishankara et al. 2009). Oceans and soils
under natural vegetation are non-anthropogenic sources of N2 O. However, at a global
scale, the emission of N2 O is mostly caused by, or related to, anthropogenic agri-
cultural and other land-use activities. The atmospheric concentration of N2 O has
increased by more than 20% from ~271 ppb to 331 ppb since the industrial era (ca.
1750) to 2018 (WMO 2019). Over the last decade, the rate of N2 O increase was equal
to 0.95 ppb yr−1 (IPCC 2013b; WMO 2019) with an increasing trend (Makowski
2019; Thompson et al. 2019). In 2006, the total anthropogenic source of N2 O was
6.9 Tg N2 O-N. Out of these direct emissions, agricultural sources dominated (4.1
Tg N2 O-N), while indirect emissions accounted for 0.6 (with a range of 0.1–2.9)
Tg N2 O-N (IPCC 2013a). Such a large N2 O emission is attributed to various factors
including the intensification of agricultural and other human activities, increased
use of synthetic fertiliser (119.4 million tonnes of N worldwide in 2019), inefficient

M. dos Reis Martins · S. Urquiaga

EMBRAPA Agrobiologia Seropédica, Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Seropedica,
RJ, Brazil
R. Well
Thünen Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture, Braunschweig, Germany
S. Zaman
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
1 Greenhouse Gases from Agriculture 5

use of irrigation water, deposition of animal excreta (urine and dung) from grazing
animals, excessive and inefficient application of farm effluents and animal manure
to croplands and pastures, and management practices that enhance soil organic N
mineralisation and C decomposition. These activities affect the N cycle. The N cycle
is rather complex, and it has even been disrupted due to increased N inputs and
intensification of agriculture. Sources of increased N inputs, in particular reactive
N, into the N cycle stem, for instance, from the Haber–Bosch process (Erisman
et al. 2011), thereby transforming the N cycle into the so-called N cascade, which is
characterised by the release of reactive N forms into the environment with various
consequences (Sutton et al. 2011). There are still many uncertainties concerning the
N cycle. For example, the role of individual factors controlling the occurrence and
rate of the key N transformation processes, such as denitrification and nitrification,
is uncertain (Butterbach-Bahl et al. 2013; Müller and Clough 2014; Smith 2017).
Nitrification results in ammonium (NH4 + ) being converted to nitrate (NO3 − ) under
aerobic conditions, while denitrification is the reduction of NO3 − to N2 under anaer-
obic conditions. Nitrifier denitrification occupies the niche between nitrification and
denitrification and occurs as oxygen concentrations approach an anaerobic status.
Under these conditions, nitrifiers actually convert nitrite into N2 O and N2 instead of
nitrate (Wrage-Mönnig et al. 2018).
The three GHGs (CO2 , CH4 , and N2 O), derived from various sectors, play a major
role in regulating Earth’s temperature (Fig. 1.1). Without GHGs in the atmosphere,
the average global soil surface temperature would be ~19 °C, compared to the present
values of 14 °C (Hossain 2019).
Recent data from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
clearly show that anthropogenic emissions of GHGs are at the highest in history
(IPCC 2014a). Since 1990, Earth’s average surface air temperature has increased by
about 0.8 °C, with much of the emission increases taking place since the mid-1970s
(Fig. 1.2).
The global warming potential (GWP) of a GHG relates to the amount of heat
trapped by a certain mass of a gas to the amount of heat trapped by a similar mass of
CO2 calculated over a 100-year time horizon (IPCC 2016). For example, the GWP of
N2 O is 265–298, which means if the same masses of N2 O and CO2 were emitted into
the atmosphere, N2 O would trap 265–298 times more heat than CO2 over a 100-year
time period (Table 1.1) (IPCC 2016).
The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated by parties to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in an effort to stabilise the continued
increase in atmospheric GHG concentrations. The Kyoto protocol outlines GHG
reduction targets for participating countries. The signatories to the protocol must
develop and report on their annual national inventory of anthropogenic GHG emis-
sions. Guidelines on how to construct inventories were prescribed by the IPCC
(2014b). Country-specific emission data can be considered but that requires accurate
inventory data based on precise GHG measurements.
6 M. Zaman et al.

Fig. 1.2 Recent anthropogenic emissions of GHGs (IPCC 2014a; WMO 2019)

Table 1.1 Global warming potential (GWP) and atmospheric lifespan of various GHGs (IPCC
2016)
Greenhouse gas Chemical formula Global warming potential (GWP) for a Lifespan (years)
100-year time horizon
Nitrous oxide N2 O 265–310 114
Methane CH4 21–28 12
Carbon dioxide CO2 1 Variable
Water vapour H2 O n/a Variable
Ozone O3 n/a Hours to days

1.2 Impact of Ammonia on GHG Emissions

Besides direct sources, GHGs also come from different indirect sources such as
upstream and downstream in agricultural systems (Plate 1.1).
Ammonia (NH3 ) itself has no direct greenhouse effect. It is a gas with a relatively
short residence time in the atmosphere (2–10 days) compared to some GHGs, such
as CO2 (3–4 years), CH4 (12 years), and N2 O (114 years). However, after NH3 is
emitted to the atmosphere and reacts with acids, it forms salts. These salts then return
to The Earth’s surface and act as a N source source for N2 O emissions, similar to a
fertiliser-N application. When the soil is submitted to conditions near the optimum for
1 Greenhouse Gases from Agriculture 7

Plate 1.1 Schematic representation of direct (from the cropping system) and indirect (upstream and
downstream) GHG emissions from crop production. As an example, ammonia emitted from a crop-
ping system will be deposited and potentially oxidised to nitrate, which can further be denitrified,
thus enhancing the risk for N2 O emission (Aguilera Fernández 2016)

urease activity (e.g. pH close to neutrality, soil moisture near field capacity, temper-
ature >30 °C), the N losses through NH3 volatilisation from urea-based fertilisers
applied on soil surface can be as high as 50% (Martins et al. 2017; Rochette et al.
2013). Therefore, the measurement of NH3 emission is important to estimate indirect
N2 O emissions derived from soil amendments, such as urea-based fertilisers, green
manures, animal excreta, or ammonium-based fertilisers in alkaline soils. A default
emission factor defined by IPCC, known as EF4 , can be applied for the estimation
of indirect N2 O emissions derived from volatilisation of NH3 and other nitrogen
oxides (NOx ) (IPCC 2006). The mean value of EF4 , considering the N volatilisation
and consequent re-deposition, is 0.01 kg N2 O-N per kg N volatilised as NH3 with
an uncertainty ranging from 0.002 to 0.05 (IPCC 2006). Therefore, management
options that reduce NH3 volatilisation from soils are considered mitigation practices
because they reduce indirect N2 O emissions (IPCC 2014a; Lam et al. 2017).

1.3 Aim of the Book

In 1992, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published a “Manual on

measurement of CH4 and N2 O emissions from agriculture” (IAEA 1992). Since the
publication of the manual, progress has been made in analytical techniques. The
progress includes advances in automation technologies as well as the theoretical
understanding of how soil microbial processes affect CH4 and N2 O emissions and
the factors influencing those microbial processes.
8 M. Zaman et al.

Hence, the aim of this book is to provide an updated account of the state-of-the-
art techniques to measure direct GHG emissions (Plate 1.1), as a necessary step to
propose and assess any mitigation strategy. The focus is on CH4 and N2 O emis-
sions. Additionally, information on techniques to measure indirect GHG sources is
provided. Indirect GHG sources in this book include volatilised ammonia (NH3 ).
NH3 is a reactive N gas highly affecting the environment through eutrophication and
acidification of natural ecosystems as well as human health due to the promotion of
particulate matter formation (Sanz Cobena et al. 2014). Moreover, in line with the
1992 IAEA Tecdoc document, the hands-on approach is also followed here so that
researchers, who want to use the techniques described in this book, can easily apply
them to their own work.

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